Worldwide demand for internet access via mobile devices has facilitated development of various mobile broadband standards, e.g., Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Long Term Evolution (LTE™), LTE™ Advanced (LTE-A), etc. Such standards support high data rate, low latency, Internet Protocol (IP) packet delivery, e.g., related to Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), IP multimedia services, etc.
When a mobile device is serviced in an area, or network, associated with a user's own service provider, or operator, the mobile device is serviced within a “home network.” On the other hand, when the mobile device is serviced in an area associated with another service provider, the mobile device is serviced in a “visited network.” In order to enable use of the mobile device in the visited network, the operator of the home network establishes a roaming agreement, or service level agreement (SLA), with the operator of the visited network. The SLA specifies the cost(s) and quality of service (QoS) requirements, e.g., available bandwidth, data packet loss, bit error rate, etc. of services provided via the visited network.
Although conventional mobile broadband techniques enable policy servers distributed within the home network and the visited network to retain, map, and manage roaming QoS and other service related requirements in the form of policies between networks of roaming partners, such techniques do not consolidate mapping of the QoS requirements between the networks in a centralized manner. Lack of consolidation of roaming related information in a centralized manner creates operational problems of managing a distributed database, e.g., keeping multiple, geographically distributed copies of information synchronized with the most recent roaming agreement(s).
The above-described deficiencies of today's communication networks and related technologies are merely intended to provide an overview of some of the problems of conventional technology, and are not intended to be exhaustive. Other problems with the state of the art, and corresponding benefits of some of the various non-limiting embodiments described herein, may become further apparent upon review of the following detailed description.